


where your soul meets mine

by sweetwatersong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bodyswap, Clint Barton Made a Different Call, Gen, Head Injury, Red Room, Walk A Mile In Your Shoes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia Romanova has never met Clint Barton. He has never met her. But when she wakes up in SHIELD's training gym, and he in the Red Room's facilities, they learn what that life looks like, sight unseen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where your soul meets mine

**Author's Note:**

> For spyforaday, who in the be_compromised 2015 promptathon posted, "Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Clint and Natasha are victims of a body swap."
> 
> Day 4 of the 12DoW clean out.

She comes to within a hairs-breadth of killing the man kneeling above her, ready to push off the mat and go for his throat; all that saves him is that her motion is halted before it can begin. Instead her reaction is swept away by an overwhelming wave of nausea and pain, a haze that wipes out all sight of him and turns against her senses. It sinks into her bones, riddles its way through her grip on reality, as her target says, “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

She is not.

Everything blurs - hands and medics and people touching her, treating her, and limbs that will not respond to her commands - until Natalia opens her eyes to white. White walls, and clear vision, and the insight that the lungs which keep her breathing are not the lungs she knows.

The body that aches around her is densely muscled and broad-shouldered and masculine. The body that she is in is hers to command, but it is not _hers_.

“Kent rang your bell a good one there, didn’t he?” says one of the orderlies in the room, a woman with hard eyes and scarred hands. “Sounds like you zigged when you should have zagged.”

“Next time don’t spar with agents who can’t pull their punches,” the male adds, as Natalia’s mind whirls with fading agony and endless confusion. But the soul that lived in this body has done it with such great force that the shell carries on as he would have, his mind permeating every fiber of his muscles, his lungs, his bones.

"Next time I won’t pull mine," it says, rolling its one good shoulder in a loose impression of a shrug, and the orderlies don’t look alarmed. Instead they laugh without suspicion.

"And here we were thinking that the concussion would finally knock some sense into you," comments the one with the buzzcut. He shakes his head as he flips the many pages of the record chart up. "We'll keep a close eye on your progress."

"That's the last thing I need," comes from this body's lips; it's her intent and his voice, protesting but already giving in. "Come on, guys, I'm fine."

"Tell that to the hairline fractures in your left collarbone." The female orderly adjusts the lines running into the thickly-muscled forearm that Natalia recognizes as _hers-not hers_. The sight brings out an impulse, a desire to pull the IVs free and swing _her-not her_ legs over the side, to carry on as if this body can function without the liquids that must be numbing the pain. 

Such an idea goes against every grain of her training. The urge shocks her almost more than the actual transfer, or switch, or whatever has taken place to make her live and breathe and think inside a body so alien to her own. Her surprise is enough to silence whatever reply the body might have made on its own behalf, letting the woman note the numbers on the equipment and leave for the door in blessed ignorance of whatever has taken place.

"Another day and you'll be good to get up and go around. But you won’t be going on any missions until that," and the man nods at _hers-not hers_ shoulder, "fixes itself. Sorry, Barton, but you're going to be grounded for another month or so."

She nods this unfamiliar head when no ready words spring to mind, unsure of her footing, unsure of anything but that being inside this skin is making her own crawl, if such a thing is possible. Then again, what couldn’t be possible now?

They leave, setting the chart on the door frame where she can see it, and Natalia catches her first glimpse of a name.

_Clint Barton._

———

He claws his way into consciousness, rising to wakefulness to find his body rising on its own, pushing him upwards on delicate hands too slender to be his. This isn’t his body; that knowledge is instinctual, instantaneous, heavy with the weight of breasts and dust that sets a lower center of gravity than he is accustomed to. But overwhelming that awareness is the thick taste of blood in his mouth as he swallows, spitting out droplets of red and long strands of hair that stick to his cheeks, and everything hurts more than he could have imagined before the Swordsman entered his life.

"Get up, Natalia," a dispassionate voice commands from behind him, somewhere in the mess of shadows and half-light spilling through the rubble-strewn room. "We do not take rests when we feel like it."

A shape moves in the edges of his vision and his body shifts to pull sneaker-clad feet underneath him, twisting his hips to angle into a defensive crouch. The lank-haired man stares at him with flat eyes, dead eyes, no life in that dark expression but for the reflection of the scattered light.

"You are so close to graduating." The voice is cool and unimpressed by the blood dripping onto the concrete. Clint realizes as another drop crashes into the puddle that the blood is coming from somewhere in the region of his temple. But his slim hands, light hands, strange hands stay splayed on the floor and do not rise to touch the wound, do not attempt to see how bad the damage is despite the pain that make them twitch. Something is coiling through Clint's stomach, an agony and heat twined together, and he realizes it's anger; anger and a desperate, terrible fear.

Fear for his - his? - life.

"Again," the invisible voice states, and the broad-shouldered man comes in fast and brutal.

Clint counters with unfamiliar hands, ducks in a body far more nimble than his own, and lets the tendons and ligaments carry him onto the man's back and into a clawing chokehold that he's never used.

———

Natalia is racing against time, straining every fiber of _her-not her_ body to reach the child clinging to life and the building's roof by his fingertips. There is no hesitation in this moment, no second-guessing as to where this particular impulse comes from. Her own will and the residue of the former soul are in concert on this, united and linked, even as the still-healing arm pinned under her keens a protest against the abuse.

“Grab on,” she tells the little boy, unable to go farther without relinquishing the hook of one ankle around an exhaust pipe. “Don’t give up.”

Then she has him, the lock of _her-not her_ fingers around his wrist a secure one, and pulls them both away from the edge through sheer effort. As _her-not her_ muscle ache the emergency comm crackles with static and voices, demands that Barton give a status update. She’s about to reply that they’re safe when Provost screams across the rooftop.

“Clint, look out!”

The siding of the apartment building next door, weakened by the structural damage, is giving way. Natalia only has a moment to look up to see the twisted fire escape bearing down on them, the weight of mortar and bricks thrown behind it, gravity sending it careening towards them. She pulls the boy to her chest, tucking his thin frame against her wider one, and rolls onto her side as dust rains over them. And then -

———

The air is thin and cold up this high. It is cold for the lack of the pale sun, hidden behind the airplane’s hull. It is colder still because of the wind that whips at the curls escaped from his poorly done ponytail. Clint watches the ground race away through the open hatch, barren and washed out in the winter sun, and imagines what would happen if he refused. If he took the knife in his thigh holster and stabbed the training instructor beside him, made it to the cockpit and locked the Red Room trainees out. How far could he make it before they brought the plane down?

The answer’s still the same: not far enough.

A siren blares once. The instructor’s hand shoves his shoulder. Clint takes the three steps to leap out the hatch into thin air, getting his bearings on the targeted building thousands of feet below. There is little pleasure in the rush of adrenaline, little more than focus and fury and fear in the thin body he is becoming used to, and he falls down, down, down until his hand grabs the parachute release and pulls.

The ‘chute snaps out behind him, billowing long enough to slow his descent, to bring his velocity from fatal to nearly-so. It’s the work of a moment to slice through the cords and fall again; as it has since the switch, this body catches him and folds on its own.

He hits the rooftop in a roll, ankles and legs and forearms taking the brunt of the impact. In surviving the landing he thinks for a second that he might even make it, might pull this off, as the world spins madly around him. But everything this body can do on its own isn’t enough. His foot catches on a trailing cord in a jerk that sets him off-balance, interrupts the precarious movement and sends him towards the white-washed concrete. It rises up to meet him in a blur and -

———

When they meet for the first time, it is on the wrong end of an arrow. Clint looks down the scope into eyes he found in the cracked bathroom mirrors, watchful and knowing and green as sea glass. Natalia sees the fingers that she taught new knife tricks to, the scars that have whitened where pain taught his body to catch blades hilt-first.

He lowers his bow, the twinge of a well-healed collarbone accompanying the movement. She relaxes her stance, her wrists loose by her side.

“What should I call you?” He asks in a voice that’s rougher than it should be. She does not smile; she has not yet learned to smile for anyone but her marks.

“Natasha,” she tells him easily, and there is no lie in that new truth, this new future. He nods.

“Still Clint,” he replies. She inclines her head.

“It is… strange to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

They do not speak of those confused days, of learning about another inside of their skin and finding the pain and the price there to be paid. The desperation and hiding and never knowing if they would be themselves again. The incomprehensible whirl seeing a life through a stranger’s eyes.

They do not speak of it, any of it; they have no need to.

When his hand extends, a promise and a question joined together, hers takes it.


End file.
